PENSIONERS were the big losers in today's Budget as the Chancellor raided their coffers to fund tax cuts elsewhere.

Although the state pension will increase by £5.30-a-week to £107.45 in April, other cuts will leave some retired people much worse off.

George Osbourne announced that age-related tax allowances would be frozen, meaning more than four million people will be £83 worse off by 2014.

Currently, around five million people aged 65 and over pay income tax on pensions and other earnings. The first £10,500 of this is not taxed - but this allowance will be frozen in future, saving the Treasury £360 million next year, £670 million in 2014, £1 billion in 2015 and £1.25 billion in 2016.

The cuts in the allowance will help fund an increase in the personal allowance to £9,205 for everyone under the age of 65 and a cut in income tax for people earning more than £150,000-a-year.

Ed Miliband said it was a 'tax rise for pensioners' while other critics claimed the Government had put millionaires before pensioners who have worked hard all their lives.

Dot Gibson, General Secretary of the National Pensioners Convention said: "The decision to freeze the age related personal tax allowances effectively means around five million pensioner tax payers will no longer get additional reductions in their tax over the coming years – whilst those on the top rate of tax will see their bills reduced.

"Many older people will feel they are being asked to forego their reduction in tax to help out the super rich. There’s no fairness in that."

It also emerged that plans to introduce a single-tier state pension of around £140, in place of the current state second pension, could cost between current pensioners up to £80-a-year. This is because money will be redistributed from higher-earning pensioners to those lower down the scale.

Earlier this month it emerged that pensioners - who have been hit by record low interest rates on their savings - have seen the cost of living rise by more than a third since 2000.